The Void Read Free Page A

insanity and fear he found truly terrifying. The image flickered in and out, but he could hear words and fragments, even if there was seldom enough to make out a coherent story.
    “This is a mayday from the private transport Vespa .” He heard himself say. It was the last full sentence he could understand. “Warp core . . . we . . . facing catastrophic . . . cannot contain . . . maybe an hour . . . minutes . . . must abandon . . . please assist . . .” Then the screen flickered again and died.
    “That transmission,” the Lieutenant explained, “was picked up by our listening station orbiting Jupiter. Rescue ships were dispatched, but scans showed no signs of life and it was too dangerous to approach the debris field. It was most fortunate that anyone found you, Mr. Connor. It could have been years before that escape pod reached well-traveled space and by then, you would probably have been dead.”
    He stared back at her. All of this was becoming too much for his mind to process.
    “So, can you tell us what that message is all about? Does it ring any bells? Jog any memories?”
    In truth, no matter how hard he tried, it did not. He remembered none of it, and watching his own lips deliver a message he couldn’t recall was perhaps the most disconcerting experience of his life. He looked up at her, the answer written in his eyes.
    “Alright.” She sighed. “That’s understandable. Honestly, short-term amnesia is a symptom of both trauma and stasis, so it’s not altogether unexpected. But we had hoped maybe you would be different. In any event, I wouldn't worry too much about all this. Our computers have analyzed the debris field and your message. They estimate a 98.3% probability that you lost warp containment upon entering hyperspace. That shattered your core grid and forced an abandon ship. The resulting explosion destroyed all the escape pods but your own. As I said, Mr. Connor, you are truly a lucky man.”
    She smiled at him, and although this one was sincere, Aidan Connor had somehow never felt more unlucky in all his life.
     

Chapter 2
     
     
    Aidan had never been a passenger on a starship. His work before had left him with precious few moments of down time, so lying in a bed in the ship's infirmary made the hours crawl by. Charlotte had become his constant companion, and the sight of the robotic arachnid scurrying about his body no longer brought a tingle of fear. Within a week, he could walk, and Dr. Jackson had given him permission to leave the sick bay.
    It had not started well.
    He had expected it. The sideways glances, the questioning stares. He had spent enough time in space to know the suspicion that follows a survivor, the weight that hangs round his neck. Yes, he had expected it, and it would be with him all his days. However, it was not company he sought, but distraction. And the ship provided plenty of that.
    It was an older vessel, ten years or more, too big for artificial gravity even though the technology had been perfected since its construction. Thus it was long and cigar-shaped, a vast metal tube that housed enough medical equipment to treat the battle fleet of which it was a part.
    The central portion spun, and in spinning, it gave the illusion of gravity to those inside. Since gravity was an illusion anyway, no one ever knew the difference. He studied every part of it from stem to stern and the captain was even kind enough to allow him a visit to the bridge. The only portal to the outside was there; windows were always dangerous and did nothing but weaken the structural integrity of a ship.
    From the bridge he was able to see Jupiter as it passed them by. More impressive was the carrier group itself, the massive Agamemnon thundering above the medical frigate—by far the largest vessel he had ever been in—dwarfing the Alabama . Yet even the wonders of the ship were finite, and once he had seen everything, the boredom returned.
    The days crept by and at times it seemed they would never